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This series has provided a biblical framework for the pervasiveness, source and purpose of darkness, but as such it has mostly been descriptive with the hope of helping us to see and appreciate the scale of darkness in our lives. We will now consider the effect of darkness upon our identity and the resulting confusion it produces.

I proved in the first episode that the darkness was our inability to see spiritually, or to perceive Ultimate Reality, which means we all live in a delusion about our life and ourself. As the light comes on in our lives, we gain self awareness and discover just how dark things truly are. The Christian reformer,John Calvin said:

“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”

Contrary to the common assumption of the world which thinks our true self is rooted in our affections for whom we desire to be or become, the discovery of our self, our true self is one and the same discovery as that of discovering God, because the location of our true self is found in God, though hidden.

“…your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)

This is not to say that we are gods…we are not… and we must question any philosophy or doctrine which claims we are divine. Gaining this knowledge of self and God is a spiritual discovery that allows us to see in and through our darkness and the darkness in our world. I might note that this is not a religious discovery. Knowledge of religion may in fact provide a container for the discovery of self and God, but converting or subscribing to a religion (any religion) is no guarantee of such knowledge nor the ability to gain true insight into our spiritual reality. The coming to “ourself,” like the prodigal son (Luke 15:17), is only possible in our coming back to God. The person who believes they have found their true self apart from the knowledge God is still in darkness, and lives under the delusion of their own shadow.

Our world is pregnant with people who are oppressed by the darkness of this ontological distortion.

To come to know our self…(our true self, our true identity, our ontological center)…is to discover who we are as an image bearer in distinction from who we are as a shadow. This distinction has been discussed for centuries as the true self and false self.

Interestingly, while the Bible says much about being an image bearer, it uses the metaphor of shadow far less. However, the life, effect, and power of sin over our lives is functionally synonymous with the metaphor of our shadow or false self, and as such, the Bible has much to say.

The Hebrew word “Tzelem” is similar to “DaMooth” meaning (replica, reflection,  likeness – similar to, or the pattern of…) and is found many times in the Hebrew scripture referring to either how each of us is made in the “Image of God” or how each of fashions images (idols) for ourselves. This later point is really important to understand. Here are examples of how image is used both ways.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

“Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you.” (Deuteronomy 4:23)

Let’s reflect each of these in turn.

An image cannot exist of itself. James Finely uses a funny metaphor to help us understand how as an image bearer, our existence is entirely dependent upon God. I’ll paraphrase it: “Imagine one day, while standing in the mirror, our image speaks to us and says that after much personal therapy, self-help books, and personal growth it is now ready to venture of on its own. Our image wants to emancipate from us and be its own identity. In response to this we step half way out of the mirror’s reflection, and our image looks at itself and realizes it’s missing half of its existence. Then it goes back to therapy, and self discovery, in hopes of becoming self subsisting and independent of it’s dependence upon reflecting us.”

This metaphor so perfectly illuminates the bigger issue. Namely that being an image bearer is not about looking like God in that God must have two arms, two legs, etc…, nor is it exclusively about our intellectual and spiritual capacity for self-knowledge. Rather being an image bearer means that our existence, our being, our self, has no existence apart from the existence of God. There is no capacity, in and of ourselves, whereby we can live, even for a moment, where the life and breath of God is not graciously poured out to us, providing our existence, moment by moment. It is not that humanity possess divinity in ourselves, it is that the divinity of God is reflected in and through humanity in and as our existence. Being alive is not biology, our very life IS the very life of God bearing through in and as our biology.

Whereas an image in a mirror reflects the detail of its sole Source, a shadow is different. The Hebrew word for shadow is “tzel” which comes from “tzelem”. The shadow is derived, not reflected as an image. The shadow exists only in direct proportion to the direction of light and exists only as the negation or reduction of that light. A shadow doesn’t actually exist in the same way an image does. A shadow is the darkness which can only be measured by the reduction of light. It’s a default, negatively derived, fully dependent form of that which is actually real and actually exists.

To live in spiritual darkness, is to believe that our image or even worse, our shadow, is its own source of existence or being. This is the violation of the first commandment which says:

“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)

The shadow makes an “idol” or “graven image” out of ourselves or any created thing instead of reflecting the image of God. Idol making is the blindness or inability to see the creator who creates, moment by moment, every particle of the universe, and then assume all that exists is somehow existing on its own. As this comes into view, we quickly discover that even the most devout among us fail to appreciate our utter dependence upon God for existence and begin thinking that we exist independently. “…(you) have forgotten the Lord, your Maker (Isaiah 51:13). Pride is our willful rejection of our Source and Creator and the insistence that we self-subsist and self-exist. “How great is the darkness.” (Matthew 6:23) In our delusion we consider ourselves to be an image bearer, but we can have no existence when we live as a shadow.

“And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:23)

This “dark side” or shadow or “false self” is as Thomas Merton says, the only thing God knows nothing about. To live from the shadow instead of from the image is a delusion of existence. It is the refusal to truly exist at all, it is to be utterly lost. The grip of darkness over such lives is unimaginable, yet on display everyday. Shadow people are not real yet, they are illusions, delusions, utterly deceived by their sin.

“In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

The person living from the image of God is a someone with a bit more definition and light. The image bearer is that person whom has discovered they do not exist of themselves, and still recognizes their capacity for shadow. This too is on display in almost everyone.

“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:49)

The secret of decoding life is spiritual sight, or seeing in our darkness. As the light dawns in our minds and hearts, we begin to see the darkness of our own shadow and we experience the negative impacts of living in darkness or sin. The evidence of self-awareness begins with acknowledging our shadow of sin. The question becomes: “What are you going to do about it?”

Allow me to spare you a few decades of futile effort.

If you turn to psychology you can employ what Carl Jung called “shadow work” or what Skinner called behaviorism, but after thousands of dollars, and decades in a chair, we will only discover that we cannot free ourselves from this dark side completely.

If we turn to religion, we can follow the 10 commandments, the 8 fold path, the 5 pillars, meditate, chant, pray, give alms, flagellate ourselves, escape to solitude, or a million other rituals, ceremonies, or paths of so-called righteousness, and in the end, our shadow is no further because the faster we run, the faster it runs.

We can try denial or minimizing our sin or even surrendering entirely to our shadow and relabel our evil, our depravity, and our corruption as good, normal, or healthy, but even if we do so in a community of other deniers, our sin remains and even grows.

The Gospel, not religion, has been the worlds only rescue.

“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21)

To be reconciled to God is to reconcile our existence as God’s own existence in and as our life. Our shadow disappears in the darkness once we see (our eye becomes good) the love of God has become our darkness. In our own moral effort, religious or otherwise, we cannot escape the shadow of our own sin, but the Good News is that our inability (weakness) is the proximity of God’s love manifesting in and as our weakness. It’s the only revelation in human history where we can say of our sin, “That’s not me…it’s Christ”.

When this revelation hits us, our faces hit the dust, our knees buckle, our countenance falls not in fear, but in complete gratitude and adoration. Now as an image bearer, when we see the shadow…we see Christ.

 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

As long as we live, we will possess this shadow…and our healing is not the escape from it, but the experience of Christ within it. Our existence is God’s existence, our life is Christ’s.

“When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:4)